France ready to 'roll out the red carpet' for British exit from EU

France would "roll out the red carpet" if Britain decided to leave the
European Union, the country's foreign minister has said, as David Cameron
promised to give Britons a straight referendum choice on whether to stay in
the 27-nation bloc or leave.

By Telegraph staff and agencies

9:50AM GMT 23 Jan 2013

Laurent Fabius said that Britain had "positive points" to offer Europe, but told French Info radio that he had told a recent meeting with British businessmen: "If Britain wants to leave Europe we will roll out the red carpet for you."

The comment is a jibe on much-reported remarks by the British prime minister last year in which he angered the French by offering to "roll out the red carpet" to wealthy French citizens and firms who wanted move out and pay their taxes in Britain.

Mr Fabius also repeated France's view that there could be no "Europe a la carte" in which a country picked which rules applied to it.

"Imagine we are a football club. You join the football club - but once you are in, you cannot say 'Let's play rugby'," he added.

He ended months of speculation by announcing in a speech the plan for a vote sometime between 2015 and 2018, shrugging off warnings that this could imperil Britain's diplomatic and economic prospects and alienate its allies.

But Mr Cameron said Britain did not want to pull up the drawbridge and retreat from the world but that public disillusionment with the EU is at "an all-time high".

"It is time for the British people to have their say. It is time for us to settle this question about Britain and Europe," Cameron said. His Conservative party would campaign for the 2015 election promising to renegotiate Britain's EU membership.

"When we have negotiated that new settlement, we will give the British people a referendum with a very simple in or out choice to stay in the European Union on these new terms; or come out altogether. It will be an in-out referendum."